Space Battleship Yamato DVD is out

For the Sci-fi movie fan, I would think you are aware of the 'Space Battleship Yamato' movie shot by Japan. Based on popular anime from the 1970s, this movie was released last year in Japan but I don't recall it coming to Malaysia (or did I miss it). The official DVD however is now available and I just bought mine from MovieMagic at 1U. Good price (kudos to Speedy Video) at RM19.90 for the original DVD, makes it sort of pointless looking for non originals. Should be something different, from all the Battle Los Angeles, Skyline, etc staple from Hollywood (I hope).

Watched it 3-4 months ago, HK copy.... ok story, big budget Japanese movie, very good CGI which is comparable to Hollywood, good Dolby sound and picture....wonder Speedy copy ( local recorded copy ) has such comparable good sound.

I checked the DVD on a Sharp 32" LCD, using both a Sony DVD and a Samsung Blu-Ray player. The DVD comes with both Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS 5.1 soundtrack in japanese only. The picture quality is about par for a normal DVD, e.g. like one of those RM8 types you buy from shops (those copied from original DVDs, not secretly shot at the theatre using a videocam). Having gotten used to 1080p and Blu-Ray quality, one thing I find a bit of an issue with DVD and is very apparent in this DVD is the graininess of the picture. DVD is normally 480p and I implement video upsampling on the Sony (and the Samsung), to 1080i (the Sharp doesn't do 1080p). I think upsampling to 720p which is the native resolution of the Sharp LCD might give better result so will try it out later. I don't have a chance to check out the sound yet as I don't have a proper AV in this set.

One annoying feature of this DVD is that it has lots of 'enforced' advertisements and trailers. The advertisement I sort of understand because I think it is Sharp's advertising sponsorship for the DVD that enables Speedy to sell it at such a relatively cheap price RM19.90 (for an original DVD of a reasonably current movie). But the way the DVD is manufactured, I was forced to sit through almost 10minutes of advertisement and trailers - the fast-forward, next track, menu and even the stop functions are neutralised and in order to get to the movie menu, there is no way but to let the 10minutes of ads and trailers run to completion. It would have been better to put the trailers as part of the special features in the movie menu. I usually check out the special features and the trailers anyway to see what interesting things are in store. But because of the 'forced' audienceship, I actually let it run while I go about doing other things and only went back to the TV when the movie menu is on screen. So the idea of forcing buyers of the DVD to watch the ads and trailers is self-defeating in this sense.

I will watch the movie in whole over the weekend. I usually just enjoy movies at their face value so I know I will enjoy this movie.

The other movie I am curious about and which I don't think will show in the cinemas here is Iron Sky. This is set to debut in April next year.